Investigation of an Ultra-Fast All-Optical Self-Clocked Demultiplexer

摘要

Terahertz optical demultiplexers are required for ultrafast time domain opticalswitching and processing. This work describes the development of a new interferometric based all optical switching element that performs this ultrahigh bandwidth function. The component is based on a Mach Zehnder configuration with two spatially offset semiconductor optical amplifiers on the internal arms of the interferometer that act as nonlinear optical elements. This offset and functionality perform the necessary task of optical phase shifting and hence modulation of an incoming optical pulse in a terabit per second data stream in the presence of a counter propagating clock pulse. Such operation alleviates the need for polarization control and multiplexing or wavelength filtering, which is the basis of previously developed all optical demultiplexers.